It is the first law of practical courage. To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school.
I would rather a boy learnt in the roughest school the courage to hit a politician, or gained in the hardest school the learning to refute him – rather than that he should gain in the most enlightened school the cunning to copy him.
There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived.
Only friendliness produces friendship. And we must look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendliness.
Because our expression is imperfect we need friendship to fill up the imperfections.
The only object of liberty is life.
The eagle has no liberty; he only has loneliness.
Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king.
Religious unity can look like a carnival and religious liberty can look like a funeral.
Without authority there is no liberty. Freedom is doomed to destruction at every turn, unless there is a recognized right to freedom. And if there are rights, there is an authority to which we appeal for them.
The man of the true religious tradition understands two things: liberty and obedience. The first means knowing what you really want. The second means knowing what you really trust.
Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making truth the test. The sceptic feels himself too large to measure life by the largest things; and ends by measuring it by the smallest thing of all.
It is the decisive people who have become civilised; it is the indecisive, otherwise called the higher sceptics, or the idealistic doubters, who have remained barbarians.
No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon.
The sceptics, like bees, give their one sting and die.
It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.
The average businessman began to be agnostic, not so much because he did not know where he was, as because he wanted to forget. Many of the rich took to scepticism exactly as the poor took to drink; because it was a way out.
The home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks.
When a man ceases to believe in god, he does not believe in nothing. He believes in everything.
Shouldn’t atheist have an equal obligation to explain pleasure in a world of randomness. Where does pleasure come from?